Even in the middle of her despair.
She lifted her hand and stared at it for a moment, like it belonged to someone else. Then she pressed it against his chest. Against the beating of his heart. She looked up.
There was an intensity to his expression. Something sharp.
Determined.
His eyes dropped to her mouth.
She could feel him. Looking at her. Like he was touching her there.
She moved her hand over his chest, and he made a short, masculine sound in the back of his throat.
She knew he wasn’t offering comfort anymore.
He was offering something else. Something much, much more dangerous.
It was something she never thought she’d be tempted to take.
But she kept her hand there, and he shifted the way he held her face. Her breath caught.
On the exhale, her sanity returned.
Reality returned.
She stepped away from him, when everything in her resisted.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
She couldn’t acknowledge it. Neither of them had moved toward the other. They hadn’t leaned in. Nothing had happened.
Nothing.
It could have easily all been in her head. She needed it to have been in her head.
She was grief-stricken and she couldn’t even remember swimsuits.
Her husband’s best friend had offered her comfort.
She had seen something more in it that wasn’t there.
That was all. That was all.
FIFTEEN
Now
He’d said it. He’d said it out loud. Her heart was pounding now like it had done that night out on the lanai.
“Logan…”
“I’ve waited. And waited andwaitedfor you to ever acknowledge that.”
“Why? Why would I?” she asked, the words exploding from her.
The absurdity of everything with this man. They’d nearly kissed on a Hawaiian island, and now she was screaming at him in a Texas parking lot.
The complexity, the unwanted complication, spanned a country. Spanned years.
